Could internationalism have halted the rise of fascism in the 1930s? (Image c/o on Flickr.)

In my last post I wrote about information literacy and the extent to which I believe it is effective in dealing with the rise of the far-right across the globe. As I argued there, I believe that the issue we have at present is that a large section of society in Western liberal democracies feel disconnected from the political elites and have seen recent votes as a chance for them to tear down the edifice. In the UK, it has led to a vote to leave the EU. In the United States it has led to the election of a candidate who stood firmly on an anti-establishment platform. What connects these two events is, in my view, a collective wish by electorates to give the establishment a kicking, stirred up by a cynical right-wing that seeks to advance a political philosophy that seeks to further the divide between the richest and the poorest.

I said in my previous post that I didn’t want to get into answers that can lead us on the path to salvation. I was criticised for doing so. I still do not want to get into the business of providing answers, but I do want to explore some of the issues a bit more from a historical context, in the hope that it might provide me with some answers, as well as perhaps highlight some of the lessons of the past.

Of course, in some respects it’s very lazy to return to the 1930s to seek lessons to learn in order to understand the world as it increasingly is now. It’s relatively recent, it’s an aspect of history that every school pupil studying the subject is bombarded with, and it’s a period that has become somewhat of an obsession. Putting all that to one side, however, it’s a good point to start exploring the rise of the far-right and the circumstances around it.

As I noted in my previous post, the Nazis rose to power not on the back of a coherent programme that garnered mass support, rather they threatened to smash the whole system down and start afresh. They wanted to tear the system down and build Germany from afresh. What for them had become “rotten” they did not wish to fix or patch up, they wanted to smash it down and construct something new. It wasn’t about reform, it was about destruction and re-building. This led to growing support as the communist “threat” hovered in the background, as Kershaw notes:

“Panic at the growing support for the communist party (largely at the expense of the Social Democrats), and the wildly exaggerated prospect of a communist revolution, had gripped the middles classes. The ‘bourgeois’ parties of the centre and right duly collapsed, along with over thirty small regional or interest parties (their proliferation facilitated by an electoral system of unrestricted proportional representation). The Nazis hoovered up the bulk of their dwindling support.” (Kershaw, 2015)

The centre collapsed under the strain and, ultimately, people fled to the extremes, whether that be the communists or the fascists. The centre was no longer tenable as a political position. Arguably, given those circumstances, only a strong communist party would have been enough to prevent the Nazi rise to power internally (emphasis on arguably). But to what extent would internationalism limited the rise of the fascists in the 1930s?

Orwell’s Lion and the Unicorn, an essay published in 1941, highlight the extent to which there was a lack of international solidarity to tackle the rise of fascism. Orwell writes:

“Economically, England is certainly two nations, if not three or four. But at the same time the vast majority of the people feel themselves to be a single nation and are conscious of resembling one another more than they resemble foreigners. Patriotism is usually stronger than class-hatred, and always stronger than any kind of internationalism. Except for a brief moment in 1920 (the ‘Hands off Russia’ movement) the British working class have never thought or acted internationally. For two and a half years they watched their comrades in Spain slowly strangled, and never aided them by even a single strike.” (Orwell, 2000)

This lack of internationalism was also reflected by the late Jack Jones, a trade unionist and a member of the XV International Brigade. In a collection of reflections on the Spanish Civil War, Jones recalled the lack of interest in foreign affairs by his fellow workers:

“Day after day at the dock I tried to draw my mates’ attention to what was happening in the world. It wasn’t easy, for the order of debate was sport, sex, beer and, of course, the job. But Hitler had come to power in Germany and their trade union movement was in tatters. The trade unionists, Socialists and Communists were being pushed into concentration camps along with the Jews. Early in 1934 the Austrian trade unionists had been brutally suppressed by Dollfuss. Older trades unionists on the Trades Council were apprehensive and coveted their fears to me, but, to my workmates, Germany and Austria were far-off countries.” (Arthur, 2009)

One wonders to what extent the rise of fascism would have been halted had there been a united, large-scale internationalist response to its rise. I’m of the school of thought that believes that if the “allies” had taken a stronger line with Franco in the Spanish Civil War, indeed, if they had fought for the Republic, the rise of fascism would have been checked (it’s a dangerous game playing “what ifs…” with history mind you). Whether you believe it would have made a difference or not, it seems evident to me that internationalism, a true sense of international solidarity, would have made a significant difference.

Is this an answer to our current situation? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe there are a whole host of answers, complex, multi-faceted answers that we need to consider (yes). There is no magic bullet, no single answer that will reverse the rise of the far-right. But I can’t help but think that working internationally, in solidarity, not treating the problems of one Western liberal democracy as entirely distinct from other Western liberal democracies, might help. That maybe, instead of creating answers for our own backyard, we need to work together with our neighbours to ensure all our communities are safe.

I tend to hark on about Orwell a lot, but there are some words of his that provide some distant hope as to the future. Reflecting on the Spanish Civil War he wrote:

“Too ignorant to see through the trick that is being played on them, [the working class] easily swallow the promises of Fascism, yet sooner or later they always take up the struggle again. They must do so, because in their own bodies they always discover that the promises of Fascism cannot be fulfilled. To win over the working class permanently, the Fascists would have to raise the general standard of living, which they are unable and probably unwilling to do.” (Orwell, 2000)

Those are not the terms I would use, but there seems to be to be a truth there about Brexit, Trump and the far-right across the Western world. Their promises to the workers cannot ever be fulfilled. They cannot bring the utopia that the workers desire. They cannot close the gap between the richest and the poorest. They cannot lift the standards of living of the poorest in our communities. Why? Because it is in contravention to their own political philosophy. By working internationally in solidarity, perhaps we can bring about this realisation a little earlier, and hasten the decline of the far-right.